spring, summer, fall, winter - and spring
by son-of-puji
Summary: "When Thor was still a child, and after a stormy night the next morning he found a high hat trapped among the thorns of their rosebush, his mother said the Northern winds brought the most unusual things. Many years later, they carry something unexpected again." Thor lives his mundane life until one day change knocks on his door, literally. Hipster!AU Thor/Loki
1. spring

**A/N: **Midgard AU with hispters and cafés and all the tropes I like, yay.**  
**Title comes from the movie but nothing else does.  
Edit: I'm sorry I haven't realized FFN killed my scene separators...

* * *

**spring, summer, fall, winter… and spring**

**i. spring**

When Thor was still a child, and after a stormy night the next morning he found a high hat trapped among the thorns of their rosebush, his mother said the Northern winds brought the most unusual things.

Many years later, they carry something unexpected again.

. .

It's foggy outside and the glass panes are trembling under the assault of the wind when there is a knock on his door. Thor mentally checks if he has paid this month's rent or the other bills, but he looks at the kitchen counter where he usually keeps them and finds it empty, and it is mid-month anyway when nothing is due. He only preys it's not the neighbor across the corridor who cannot change a light bulb alone. He is tired, and he has a slice of reheated pizza and a bottle of lager for company, and if he's lucky, he would fall asleep and not wake up till his shift at the café next day. It's been a long day, and the weather is weighing down on his head. It's windy and cold, and he almost hit a dog on his way home in the fog.

So when he pulls the door open, it is not without an edge to his expression. It's peeled off, though, the next moment.

"Aren't you cold?" This is the first thing on Thor's tongue when he sees his brother.

His hair is an inky halo around Loki's pale face as he stands under the meager light of the bulb above Thor's door. He wears a thin long-sleeve that's rolled up to his elbows and a scarf – the least rational combination Thor can imagine but Loki's always been more stylish than practical when it came to clothes.

"It's good to see you, too," Loki smirks.

Thor pulls him into a hug which Loki surprisingly allows, and he inhales the sharp clean smell of fog, and the dust of the wind. There is something intangible in the scent, and his arms tighten around the thinner frame of his brother until Loki starts to wriggle against the restraint, and Thor thinks it is fitting that he would do so. Ever is Loki a slippery, uncatchable creature like a blinking light bulb, flickering in and out of places as he wills.

"You should eat more."

"Yes, mum," Thor can hear the eye roll in his tone, and finally releases him. "You still have that fairly comfortable couch you mentioned?"

Thor looks at the leather bag hanging on Loki's shoulder, and smirks. It's good that he still has almost the whole pizza in the fridge, and another bottle of beer to share.

. .

"Just for a while, a few weeks maybe," Loki says around a mouthful of pizza. He squints at the living room beyond the circle of the light and snorts. "I thought you'd need someone to dig you out of this mess already."

Thor shakes his head with an incredulous laughter. It is Loki's way of rendering a request as if it was actually a favor he was gracious enough to do.

"You stay as long as you wish. I'm happy for company," he says with a grin that tightens around the edges as he notices how the pepperoni paints Loki's lips blaring red. It's in stark contrast with his pale face. "Something's happened at home?"

Loki's expression is pinched as he shrugs. "You live closer to the uni. I don't want to travel so much every day."

Thor can read between the lines, though. With Loki, he learnt how to.

"I know it's hard to get along with father sometimes."

"Especially if you are continuously compared to someone else," Loki gives him a pointed look. At least Thor has the decency to look guilty. "You're not even my brother, for God's sake."

"We are not related but we _are_ brothers."

Loki rolls his eyes and steals his beer. His bottle is already empty. "Semantics."

Thor frowns but lets it slip. Loki is his step-brother and they are alike in almost nothing, yet sometimes it is hard to remember that they haven't grown up together. Six years ago, right after Thor graduated, his parents decided on divorce. His mother moved from their home to her hometown with Thor's little brother, while Thor stayed with his father, mostly because he didn't want to give up everything and everyone he knew and liked. Not a year later his father met Farbauti, and with that Thor suddenly had a new brother in place of Baldur when Loki moved in with his mother. Loki was sixteen at that time, a ghostly, reserved thing, and Thor had a hard time to penetrate the shield Loki would yank up around himself from time to time. There was something in him, though, that made Thor want to call him _brother_ from the first moment Loki swaggered in their home with a cautious glint in his eyes and a face that was perfect and unmoving as a marble sculpture. He intrigued Thor from the very beginning like a wooden box he couldn't find the key to, but just when he was about to give up, Loki let him draw closer. The timing made it feel like every achievement in the case was Loki's doing but Thor didn't mind it.

"You were supposed to visit us." There is a biting tone in Loki's voice Thor knows he didn't intend to slip in, and Thor eyes him in strange quivering excitement. When Loki adds it, it sounds like an afterthought. "Odin's been expecting you."

"Yeah, well, sorry," he rubs his nape, and for the first time since Loki arrived, he cannot meet his eyes.

Ever since he moved to the downtown two years ago, his visits have been irregular but oft. Then something changed during the last holidays at Christmas, and they haven't seen each other ever since.

Thor's hectic schedule at the café let him take only four days off, and this was the first time he found it too much. He spent the first day at his father's home with Farbauti and Loki. Farbauti makes the strongest glögg in the whole country, Thor is sure she adds twice as much vodka as she should, and all those restless nights in the past months he tended to blame the drink for everything.

It was on that pine-scented, glögg-hazed evening that Thor wondered if he would taste the cardamom on Loki's tongue, had they kissed. He isn't proud of it, but next morning he fled to his mother earlier than planned, to spend the rest of the holidays with Frigga and Baldur.

. .

There is something natural in how their routines fit each other's, Loki's filling the gaps of Thor's, like a perfect cogwheel, the teeth clicking into the right slots. After all, they have been living under the same roof for a couple of years, but this is different. They are adrift.

Thor feels closer to Loki than ever before, and it scares him sometimes when he is lying in his bed, trying to make out Loki's breathing in the other room through the closed door. The thrumming of his blood beats away the minutes like a crude reminder that the dark hours of the night he spends craving for something he shouldn't lay his eyes on are barren and ephemeral.

Loki sleeps on the couch as Thor doesn't have a spare bed or a spare room for that matter, but Loki doesn't seem to mind it. He is at school during the day while Thor works at the café, and their evenings and some of their weekends are the welcomed intersection of sets.

. .

"What happened to your girlfriend?" Loki asks. It's Sunday morning and they just finished their breakfast. "The last one… what's her name…"

"Umm, Jane. She, well… it didn't work, that's all." Suddenly Thor has no idea why he feels the need to wiggle in his seat.

They broke up with Jane a few days after New Year's Eve, and as much as it sounds clichéd, it also feels right somehow: the new beginnings. On his bookshelf he still keeps a stack of books on astrophysics and other subjects Thor isn't sure he gets the title of in the first place. Jane left them behind when she moved out and never cared to pick them up. He has always considered their presence smoothing; that the part of his life that already belongs to the past hasn't disappeared without a trace. This is the first time he finds it a burden.

"How do you know it's over anyway?"

"Facebook."

"You're not even on Facebook!"

"You checked?" Loki's smirk is devious, and Thor feels a blush paint his face red. Of course he has. Not once."I have a detective profile there."

"And you were spying on me?"

"Of course." And he doesn't look a bit ashamed by that. He winks playfully, "Very entertaining activity."

Thor doesn't know what to think of it but there is a wriggly little twist in his stomach at the thought of Loki stalking him. Maybe it should anger him, or at least make him uncomfortable, but frankly it doesn't.

"How about you then? Girlfriend?"

Loki scoffs. He stands, all long limbs and feline grace, and moves behind him with a grin. "Let me braid your hair."

"Why?"

Thor realizes belatedly that he didn't get an answer to his question but the recognition whooshes out of his head as Loki's fingers card through his hair. It's an amazing feeling, and he knows it probably should not be.

"So you can be my girlfriend."

Thor can hear the smirk in Loki's voice. He glares at him upside down, feeling the heat creep up his body. He tries to smack his hands away but Loki only laughs at him.

"And we will play house?" he snorts instead, but the images that come unbidden make him regret the remark.

Loki leans forward, his breath brushes against the shell of Thor's ear, and Thor has to fight the shiver erupting along his spine. "We already are, darling."

Thor wants to come up with a witty retort but the French toast sits in his stomach like a cold, ugly toad that could start to jump anytime, and Loki's laugh is full of beautiful mirth and a bit of gleeful mischief.

"You should wear Viking braids, Thor. Would suit you."

Thor only huffs, folding his arms. He lets Loki braid his hair, though, fighting the urge to close his eyes in pleasure as deft fingertips massage his scalp in lazy circles. Loki ties the braid with the pink ribbon he pulls from around the bag of muffins Thor took from the café last evening, and Thor asks him whether he plans to paint his nails, too.

. .

On Friday nights they watch grade-Z horror movies from the Bottom 100 list on _imdb_, and after a few cans of beer they are more than entertaining. They would sit on Thor's famous fairly comfortable couch with Loki lounging across on it, tugging his feet under Thor's thighs. His feet are always cold and Thor calls him _his little amphibian_ which always earns a kick before the foot is wriggling its way back to the warmth of Thor's body.

"I'm a frost giant, just so you know," he claims seriously and Thor believes him.

Loki's laugh at the rubber monsters quickly becomes Thor's favorite sound in the whole world. Leastwise it is, until he finds a new one later.

. .

There is a light wind, and the cherry blossoms float in the air like many pink snowflakes. The square is beautiful at this time of the year, and Thor insisted on going for a walk on the promenade between the straight rows of sakura trees.

There is a distant smile upon Loki's lips as they halt. He squints at the sky through the gaps among the blossoms, and his skin has a flushed color under the pink canopy. The sunshine casts bright spots on his face and the brushstrokes of his ink wash hair. He looks so young that it twists Thor's heart a little, for a reason he cannot fathom.

In the sunlight the faint dots around Loki's lips are more visible, the traces where his piercings had been until he removed them a few months ago, keeping only his many earrings. The dots look, Thor muses, as if at one point he has sewn his mouth shut, and the odd idea makes him shiver.

"Too bad they hardly have any scent," Loki mumbles, the sharp tip of his nose buried between the blossoms, and Thor chuckles at his loud sniffing.

He wishes he had his camera there, just to capture the dance of the light as it's skimming through the branches and painting a pink halo around Loki's head, making his skin somehow transparent and ethereal. The impression jolts his stomach with the sudden sensation of fear.

. .

"I need a tee for the night," Loki says as he opens Thor's closet without asking for permission and rummages through his clothes for an old T-shirt, and the only reason Thor stares at him with a loaded gaze is because Loki has only a towel around his hips. Loki seems to be at ease around him, more and more so, and for the first time ever since they met, Thor cannot decide if it is fortunate from his own point of view.

A part of Thor's muddled mind whispers that Loki is doing it on purpose, it's a wicked challenge: the towel, the wet hair, the water drops running down the hollow of his spine. Loki is lanky and wiry muscled, his skin is fair under the flush from the warm shower. Thor watches the sharp shoulder blades open and close with every move, and he knows he should turn away.

There are two magpies tattooed there, one on each shoulder blade like each other's reflection, wings open as though they were going to fly off any minute. The one on the right side is a playful little creature, but the other is menacing like a shadow, like a forever changing, undefined thing that one sees in a nightmare where there are no constant shapes, only intents and impressions. Thor is afraid to ask what they mean, afraid to ask if any of the two symbolizes Loki himself, though he knows they both do. They suit him, he muses, their freedom and lonesome nature, their intelligence. The prospect that they might fly away anytime if they will so.

They unsettle him, maybe exactly for this reason.

. .

"You're being decent?" Loki cranes his head around the edge of the bedroom door without knocking, of course. Thor could very easily be doing indecent things but it is Saturday morning, and Thor has a free day. It means he casually sleeps in as long as his stomach lets him.

"I'm trying to _decently_ sleep, you know," he groans. Loki is already lifting the blanket and tugging himself under it. "What's with your fairly comfortable couch?"

"Here's better." And his eyes are already closed. Thor watches the wrinkles the pillow made crisscrossing his cheek, and smiles. Loki is warm and flushed in his sleep, and his hand is a casual softness against Thor's over the blanket.

They lie there for another hour like they would have in their childhood, had they been real brothers.

. .

Loki's arm loops around his waist in the crowd, and his body is an additional heat source against Thor's. His own arm comes up around Loki's shoulders, and he knows he shouldn't feel so elated. His face is ablaze, and Thor has no idea if it's from the billowing bonfire or the arm around his waist.

Loki's face glows in the orange light, the twisting shadows accentuate his high cheekbones and the dip below his eyebrows. Thor can already smell the smoke on his hair, and the sugary smell of the waffle he just ate embedded in his skin. In the tip of the pink tongue, too, he thinks as it darts out and wets the thin lips.

It is Walpurgis Night. The city is a faint silhouette below them, fading in the smoke of the traditional bonfire. The flames rise high, and the flying embers of the fire are like twirling firebugs, like artificial stars on the overcast, darkened sky. They steal into Loki's eyes, and his gaze is almost demonic as he looks at Thor. His touch is singeing as he sweeps a lock behind Thor's ear, a golden strand that seems afire. There is a small smile on his lips as he traps the lock between two fingertips like it was molten gold he wants to paint his fingers with.

"Happy Springtime," he says.

But all Thor's heart can hear is: Happy New Beginnings.

. .

"Loki, I'm pissing!" Thor cries out indignantly as Loki bursts the bathroom door open.

"So? I just come to brush my teeth." He looks at Thor's reflection in the mirror, the way he jerked so he would show his back to him. "You should have then closed the door. You're not shy, are you, brother?"

Thor only snorts as if words wouldn't be convincing enough.

. .

"Your hands are so large," Loki says.

His breath is a sigh against the skin on Thor's arm as he reclines against him on the couch. Loki's right hand reaches over and glides on Thor's, a smooth whisper against his jagged knuckles. He straightens his fingers as if to measure them against Thor's before sliding back slowly. They leave scorching marks over Thor's skin, and he fights the urge to try to keep them from fading.

"They could easily break me anytime," Loki adds, and his tone is almost wistful.

. .

Thor sometimes muses how there is a dangerous side to inhabitation, to the intimacy of it, of the morning routines together, of the domesticated gestures and behaviors. Sometimes, when Loki's head is a numbing weight on his shoulder as he slumbers and his crisp scent is something Thor's mind regards as daily sustenance, an essence he can only vegetate without, he feels the abyss gaping right under the floor.

In a certain way he is not even surprised when eventually they tumble into it.

. .

The first time Loki drops by the café around the end of Thor's shift, he introduces him to his co-workers, Hogun and Sif. There is a perfect synch in their movements as they are closing up for the day, and Thor notices how Loki studies them from the corner of his eyes. To Sif's feeble attempts at conversation he replies with curt comments and silence he stretches out with a certain cruelty.

Thor makes a chai latte for him, with extra spices because Loki likes it that way, and he watches as the reddened fingers wrap around the cup. Outside, it is drizzling. The mixed scent of nutmeg and cardamom reminds Thor of his wretched fantasy of kissing Loki, and he has to draw farther to maintain a semblance of balance.

Loki tastes his drink silently, and Thor frowns at the tight expression that slips into his eyes with each sip. He hasn't seen it for years, the thickening shield pulling up around Loki, and he doesn't understand why it returned now.

Loki doesn't speak to him for the rest of the evening, and retreats to huddle under his blanket much earlier than usual. He doesn't come to the café either, not until later.

. .

When Thor gets home late from his shift one evening, he finds Loki sprawled on the floor outside their apartment. He is like a ragdoll thrown away carelessly, and Thor's heart jolts in his chest when he moves closer to him.

"I couldn't find my keys," Loki mumbles. There is a dried crust of blood in the corner of his mouth, and with a weird twist of his mind Thor is reminded of the cranberry jam Loki ate with a spoon right from the jar the other day, and how Thor felt the pull in his groins just to lick it off his lips.

"What happened to you?" he rasps, words are only injured syllables as they get caught in his throat.

White fury floods his mind as he bends to pick him up. Loki can barely stand on his own, and inside, under the stark light of the lamp in the living room, Thor can take in his appearance. There is a cut across one of the sharp cheekbones, a dried oval in the middle of a blossoming dark bruise, like a wicked flower painted on his face. It's been raining all day, and Loki's clothes are wet and muddy where he must have fallen (or tossed, Thor thinks with clenched teeth) to the ground. He has no idea what might hide under his clothes.

"We need to clean your wounds," he says, forcing his mind off a destructive path.

He helps him to the bathroom. Loki is seated on the closed lid of the toilet while Thor removes his shirt to get his wounds rinsed. His abdomen is a mess of colors under the muddy dirt, and Thor wonders whether any of his ribs were broken or fractured.

"Why don't you have a tub?" Loki grumbles with a tired loll of his head as he eyes the shower.

"I will help." Thor takes his pants and socks off, too, leaving only the underwear untouched.

"What, you want me to bath in this?"

There is a glint in Loki's eyes that are alarmingly sober and calculating before they turn mildly amused. Thor reaches to pull his underwear off, and Loki helps by lifting his hips without shame. Thor tries not to look but he does as he thinks of the many times he has imagined his step-brother completely naked – but never in such circumstance. He feels Loki's smirk burn a hole into his forehead.

Thor stands to unclothe himself, laughing a little at Loki's raised eyebrows when he leaves his briefs on, but it doesn't escape his attention how Loki is eying him behind swollen eyelids as he gets his shirt off.

In an honest part of his mind he knows it is not a good idea, any of this.

He hugs Loki from behind as he cleans his wounds, running his fingers along each rib, searching for damage. Loki's skin is smooth, and the curve of his spine against his chest is something he has dreamt of. He opens his mouth and drinks of the water as if wishing to swallow the images he has wrought of the threads of nights when the size of his bed is only a reminder that it has enough space for someone else, too.

Loki finds support with his palms against the tiled wall, head hung, as he lets Thor's ministration unfold on his body. Thor tries to ignore the fact how he is shaking in his arms and buckles under his own weight.

"Who did this?" Thor asks against the curve of a pale shoulder.

"They called me faggot," Loki replies, and it's only he who is aware how it doesn't exactly answer the question. Just as how the answer is not the entirety of the truth.

Thor's large hands halt over his ribcage, and Loki studies them in awe, how they are able to cover almost his whole chest. He bites into his lip, feeling the wound rip open again.

Thor withdraws his hands to slide them over Loki's back. It's at the end of a long silence that he asks, "Are they right?"

"It doesn't matter for me."

Thor hums. It is Loki's typical way of answering a question, and Thor realizes only later how it can mean that it doesn't matter to Loki that he is gay, and also that whether his partner is a man or a woman.

His earlier anger calms into a slow ravine of reverie. There is a dip on either side of Loki's spine at the small of his back, and he watches the water run down them. He thinks of how they would taste if he lapped the sweat of pleasure off them. His fingers run along the knots of Loki's spine, and he rubs his nose against the jutting vertebra at the nape of his neck, and Thor wishes he was brave enough to do it with his lips. Loki bends his head back, the column of his neck is a graceful curve as he rests his head on Thor's shoulder. Thor curls his mouth against his collarbone, and as the water runs across his lips, he imagines every drop is loaded with a promise he is thirsty for.

Loki's hands leave the wall and wrap around Thor's wrist, pulling them forth and around his torso in a sensual hug. The firm curves of his buttocks press against Thor's cock, and he can feel the heat of his skin through the wet briefs. His cock slots perfectly in the crease of Loki's ass, and the moan Thor forces himself to swallow sits in his chest like a brick. They shouldn't do this, and he shouldn't feel that each brush of their skin pulls him apart gradually. If he has ever thought he knew temptation, he was laughably mistaken.

Loki's hands move, and his own hands move with his obediently, down further and further toward Loki's crotch. Loki watches him intently, with head tipped to the side, lips parted, brushing against Thor's jaw, and Thor feels the rush of blood feeding his awakening arousal.

"No," he croaks out, and his hands stop short from their destination. Loki's spine tenses against him, and Thor adds with poorly concealed regret, "You've been just hurt."

"Oh, how noble," Loki grits, but Thor is already closing the tap.

He helps Loki out of the shower, and wraps a towel around his hips, tugging the end behind the waistline. Loki is still watching him as Thor hastily covers his bulge with a towel in a futile attempt to conceal it, but he is as good as naked in the wet, see-through briefs. Loki's sharp gaze is unwavering, unnerving, and there is a small smile tugged in the corner of his lips. With a second towel Thor starts to dry his hair as if he were a child, and Loki lets him.

Thor is a tense knot of muscles as he forces his gaze off him, shying away from the piercing obtrusiveness of Loki's glance. His breath comes in rapid huffs, and he thinks he is too weak for this. That this evening would embed itself in his mind like an eternal fantasy he can pleasure himself to. His hands slide to Loki's shoulder and he cannot help the smile stretching his lips. Loki is endearing with his tousled wet hair, and he makes the mistake of meeting his eyes, sultry and heavy and dark green with an undertone that stirs something ugly, wrong and powerful in Thor's groins.

"Loki—" he grumbles but it's so meek and breathy that it betrays him immediately. Loki leans against him like a log, and it is only convenient that his lips land on Thor's.

It's frightening how quickly it unfurls into a clash of teeth and tongues, in groping hands, and moans that die halfway in the other's mouth. Loki's body is a solid weight in his arms as Thor moves them out of the bathroom, shedding their towels. They end up in the bedroom, and Loki tugs at him, and they tumble on the bed entangled and breathless.

Loki rolls the wet briefs off Thor's hips, groaning as his cock finally brushes against Thor's. He is aware of the urgency he cannot expel from his movements like he is afraid that any interruption would let reality seep in their thoughts, and he doesn't want to turn back. He doesn't want Thor to turn back, ever.

Thor kisses every wound, every rib one by one, trying to exchange the damage with caress. His forehead drills into Loki's armpit as his tongue follows the outline of the pale ribcage.

"Thor," Loki sighs, and this is his breathy confession as Thor's tongue rubs over the ridges of his hipbone. The warmth of the mouth around his shaft shakes him apart.

When Thor moves up again and wraps his large hand around their cocks, through the whiteout of the immense pleasure Loki realizes it would be over embarrassingly fast. He drives his heels into the mattress, arching his hips just an inch closer against Thor's, and he doubts with a sudden pang of pain that anything ever could be this perfect again.

Thor runs his thumb over the head of his cock, smearing his pre-come over Loki's shaft and his brother gasps into his ear. Loki is a beautiful mess. He throws his arm above his head and grips the headboard as Thor's hand slides rhythmically up and down their cocks, and he looks like suffocating with his mouth open and throat rippling under the taught skin of his neck. The image in unbearable, it short-circuits every nerve in Thor's body, and he thinks he would have never been whole without this. Never been whole without Loki's nails leaving marks on his back only the two of them understand.

Loki comes all over his hand, and the pulsation against his cock wrenches Thor's completion from him, and he follows Loki suit, making a mess on their chests. Afterwards, it is bliss.

"Now we need to take a shower again," Loki mumbles but there is no trace of complaint in his voice. Thor retrieves his wet briefs from the bundle of sheets and wipes them off before pulling the comforter over them.

They lie there for endless silent minutes.

Thor feels the lazy flow of pleasure retreat from his limbs, and in its place the enormity of everything they have just done seeps in from the sheets, from the sweat cooling on his skin, and the feel of Loki's nose pressed against his shoulder. It is everything he has ever wanted and maybe because of this, it is as wrong as surreal.

"Shit," he rubs his face.

"Don't you dare have second thoughts!" Loki bits out sharply. "It's a bit too late for that."

A door slams shut loudly somewhere in the building and there is something definitive in the sound that makes Thor wonder if there is a closure for them, too, now.


	2. summer

**ii. summer**

"Why is it always I who do the cleaning?" Loki asks from his place on the floor. His legs are perched up on the couch he doesn't use for sleeping anymore. His whole new life was moved into Thor's bedroom, stacked in his closet and tucked under the comforter, hidden in the nightstand drawer, and smoothed over the pillows, and it is a route he has only ever hoped to go down.

He's been tiding up their apartment the whole afternoon, and his back is killing him. It actually popped when he lay down and stretched it.

"Because I do all the cooking," Thor calls from the kitchen, and from the scent Loki can tell they would have meatballs today.

Loki is a terrible cook. All he can do is scrambled eggs and broccoli soup, and far too many dishes to wash.

"Besides, you love cleaning."

Loki sniffs at his hands. They reek of detergent. "No, I don't. But I hate filth even more."

"You can come and help me, then I will help you with cleaning."

Loki looks at him upside down from his place as Thor sticks his head into the living room with a cheeky grin. "No. This time I want to eat an actual meal from a plate and not its ingredients from your skin."

Thor laughs and disappears back in the kitchen. The last time they cooked together ended up in a mess in the kitchen and no dinner at all. The failure had little to do with their cooking skill and more with the fact that they found more interest in each other than the food.

But that's a common issue these days.

. .

"You can't possibly sleep in such heat." Loki's finger is a sharp jab in Thor's back, and he groans, moving his tongue in his mouth as if it was full of mud because he actually almost managed to fall asleep. It is simply typical of Loki that he wouldn't let him.

The air-conditioner provides a constant noise level in the silence but it doesn't do much else, and they alternate between hoping it would work and opening the windows when they realize it won't, but the latter doesn't do much except for flapping the curtain a little. The heat is stacked among the walls like a vacuum that doesn't move anywhere, and they are sweating even by lying naked and motionless on the sheets.

"I usually think of boring things. That helps me fall asleep," Thor mumbles as he turns on his back. His arm brushes up against Loki's, and his brother jerks away from the additional heat. "Like microeconomics."

Loki groans. "I'd rather not think of it. I'll have the exam in two days."

In the darkness, Thor smiles at him sympathetically. After high school, his father sent him to study business and finance so he could later direct their family company but Thor gave it up after two semesters. It was simply not his cup of tea. Since Baldur was still very young, Odin made Loki go down the path Thor refused. It is not really Loki's interest either but he is smart enough to be able to accomplish it. Thor has never asked why he would obey Odin's wish; he fears it's Loki's way of proving himself worthy for his place in the family, like he is afraid, had he resisted Odin's will, he would find himself out. Thor hates the idea, he hates how it still shows the leaking wound Loki's father cut into his son when he left them behind one day. Loki was only seven, and he didn't understand back then that people's selfishness has little to do with others' worthiness. Loki still doesn't understand that a place in a family is not a thing to earn or fight for. Not something to lose.

"Sometimes I try to list the names of the dwarves in _The Hobbit_," he admits with a smirk. Loki snorts beside him, and Thor can feel how he shifts into a new position. "I always get confused, and then before I can sort it out, I fall asleep."

Loki laughs. "Boring, you say. Then I guess it's enough for me to think of you."

Thor says it's his vengeance when the next moment he rolls on Loki and holds him down until his brother arches into him with a clever mixture of curses and moans spilling from his lips.

After all, there are other methods they can try to help them fall asleep easier.

. .

"You have a new earring," Thor mumbles around his earlobe between his lips. His hand runs a distracting path on Loki's flank, but Loki has only been pretending he was reading ever since Thor stepped in the room. His arousal has a _whiff_ Loki can recognize from a mile, and it echoes in his groins every single time.

"Yes. A hammer."

Thor takes a closer look. An incredulous yet proud laughter rises in his chest. "You're kidding me. Mjölnir?"

"Yes, of course."

"I'm oddly flattered," Thor's tongue dances on the shell of his ear, a ticklish adoration in a language they speak the best, and this time it brushes over the metal symbol of the closest thing to a confession he would maybe ever get from Loki.

Loki's smirk is a devious tinge in his voice. "And how will you show your gratitude?"

It's only fortunate Thor has always loved challenges.

. .

It's raining cats and dogs, especially the former, Thor thinks as he looks at Loki. He is like a wet cat with his hair hanging in his face, with the piercing glare and angry hiss.

"Would you come already?" Loki bites it out sharply because Thor has the key which separates Loki from warmth and dryness. Thor laughs at him but he does so with a fondness only he can morph a slight into something light and weightless with.

Thor loses one of his flip-flops halfway to the apartment. The water is up to their ankles, running in wild waves down the street, and the string of the slipper snaps in the current. Thor cannot trudge forward anymore, he doubles over with his palms against his knees and laughs because such storm is beyond belief, and the downpour seems to seep into his body and fill him with something electric as though he were but a plant. He spots Loki watching him in astonishment from under the eaves of a building and he doesn't even realize how the water drips on his shoulder from the roof just as much as if he was standing in the open air.

It thunders, then the crack of a lightning paints the scene in monochromic yellow hue. Thor suddenly imagines Loki as a child, he sees the frail boy watching the storm from inside his room, counting the seconds between thunder and lightning.

Thor was always out in the garden until his mother dragged him inside again.

Sometimes he cannot believe they don't share these memories, he and Loki. Every second together now hides the sense of eternity, and he thinks the years they spent apart were simple intermissions in two lives that were meant to be one.

. .

Sometimes he thinks this would be his undoing when it seems all the blood in his body concentrates into just one part. It is a wonder he can drive without causing accident. Sometimes he realizes how ridiculous it is that the effect can be triggered with two simple words. Loki texted him right before his shift ended: _I'm bored_. And now he is so hard he cannot see straight. Thor knows what it implies. He has come to know how to chase away Loki's boredom, and his head pounds with the thought of it. It's a game they play, innocent words of insinuation.

He enters the apartment without so much as a greeting, and he gets only a silent nod in reply as he spots Loki on his knees, bent over his books on the coffee table in the living room. He is reclined on his elbows, the angular lines of his ass form a perfect right angle with his back.

Thor sees stars from his arousal, and he hasn't touched himself yet. He kneels behind Loki, stripped exactly to the extent it's needed. His erection draws a wet line on the fabric of Loki's pants as it glides down on the curve of his ass. He rolls the pants and the underwear down in one go to mid-thigh because it is just enough, too. His hand brushes over Loki's erection, and he wonders if Loki has counted the minutes of his drive home, if in his mind's eye he followed the lamp posts and intersections along the way, growing thicker and harder by the minute. The crease of Loki's ass blinks at him in shiny invitation, and the realization that he is already prepared sends Thor's head reeling.

It's Loki's favorite position, and Thor makes it worth for him, aiming for and finding the perfect angle with each thrust. They have done it many times, he has spent shameless hours of experiment to find the best stroke, the perfect slide that shakes Loki apart, to learn how to roll his hips and when to dive in with all the force he can muster. He had never been with men before Loki (and he doubts he would ever want to be – maybe with anyone else at all), but he learns fast, and Loki is vocal in his acknowledgement. It's so different from anything he has ever experienced, the drag of his cock in the clench of the tight muscles of Loki's entrance is a sensation he doubts he could ever grow tired of.

The table dances farther with each thrust, and Loki's clutch on it is the white-knuckled grip of blinding pleasure. He comes all over his papers, and the pulsation of his insides pulls Thor after him.

"Welcome home, Thor," he smirks lazily.

"I missed you," Thor answers.

And this is their usual greetings.

Neither thinks it is something they shouldn't do, and for many months to come they don't question it, don't recognize it for what it is. The apartment with their secret is a snow globe they keep close to their hearts.

. .

Loki's university is over for the semester, so when Thor doesn't find him there one evening as he gets home from the café, his mind spirals downwards on an ugly, wicked course.

"I didn't want to be sitting around here all day, so I work now at a sex shop," Loki shrugs when he arrives later and faces Thor's inquiries stoically.

Thor gapes at him. With the rational side of his mind he knows it's not like in a sex shop they sell the clerk but he cannot help the pang of jealousy. "Couldn't you find something else?"

"Why? It's a job just like any other out there. It's okay," Loki tips his head to the side snidely. "They might give me a discount, you know. They have so many interesting toys there. I'd love to try some of them with you."

He hooks a finger behind the waistline of Thor's jeans, and the rest of the night is spent with reciting the stock list of the shop with a demonstration of the user manual. By next morning, Thor doesn't think he has any objections left in him against Loki's workplace.

. .

The second time Loki visits him at the café is months after the first. Sif has a day off, so it's only Thor and Hogun behind the counter. Thor's stomach is tied in knots when Loki steps in, but this time Loki isn't uncivil to Hogun. They share a few pleasantries but neither is known for small talks so it ends quickly and painlessly.

It's mid-summer, the café is always crazy this time of the year.

"Mm, brother," Loki groans as he sips his milkshake appreciatively, and it's loud enough for others to hear it.

Thor's eyes narrow at how he intoned the word _brother_ in the way he knows would land in Thor's groins. Green eyes glint at him mischievously, and Thor is aware how powerless he is to do anything against it.

"You know, I've wanted you ever since Odin showed a photograph of you for the first time," Loki drawls, and Thor watches transfixed as his tongue twirls around the straw in his drink, and Thor grabs the edge of the counter like it was his only lifeline. "Sometimes I sneak in your old bedroom to jerk off on your bed."

The images come unbidden and Thor swallows back a moan that continues to sit in his stomach, a thrumming vibration that shakes his bones. He scans the café with scarlet face. There is a couple sitting just two feet away from them, and he knows Loki knows it, too. He knows Loki keeps his voice just on the border of being audible only by Thor.

Loki enjoys this, watching him squirm with irritation and lust. He will do it all summer, and Thor never once tells him to stay away from the café.

. .

They fuck once in the restroom of the café, and the whole time Thor is as thrilled as scared they would be discovered.

For a week afterwards, he cannot look at the men's door without coils of excitement in his belly, and he just knows it was exactly what Loki aimed for.

Hogun doesn't speak much and never asks anything intrusive, but he has clever eyes that make Thor panic sometimes that Hogun just _knows_.

. .

Thor has two days off from the café, and they are really lucky with the weather, with several days of uninterrupted sunshine, so early morning they get in the car and he drives them southward.

"It's not like we don't have beaches closer than that, and you wouldn't need to drive 300 km to get there," Loki grumbles.

"Plus the ferry to the island. You forgot that," Thor can see his own smirk reflected in Loki's huge shiny sunglasses, and though they cover his eyes, Thor can very easily imagine the eye roll Loki is giving him, accompanied with a groan. The island is far from the city, but Thor chose it exactly for this reason.

Through the crack of the window he fancies he can smell the salt of the sea, even though they are driving down between rows of trees as the road cuts through a forest. He cranks the window lower, and the draught grips his hair under the sunglasses perched on his head, flying long locks in his face. He uses the band around his wrist to tie them in a loose bun. From the corner of his eyes he catches Loki watching him with an unreadable expression.

"You should wear it like that more often," he murmurs after a pause, his voice strangely hitching in the middle. "Rather than that unkempt wig of a thug."

Thor's laugh booms with amusement because this is something only Loki can do: handing praise along with slights, but he learnt to read among the lines.

The sun filters through the canopy of trees in wide sparkling streaks, and the sky is glowing above them like a golden dome. The road seems to be shimmering before them as they leave the shade of the forest behind, and their arms mold into one under the burning light where they touch above the gearshift. Loki's legs are hiked up on the dashboard, and Thor's lips pinch at the sight of his long, slim-cut pants. He has no idea how Loki can shove himself into his tight pants on hot days like this but it's become now a tantalizing image ever since he had the chance to study the wiry curves of Loki's calves very, very closely. He would like to lick the thin sheen of sweat coating the back of his knees now. He has learnt how the trail from that spot up to the curve of his ass reduces Loki into a visceral, undone thing.

They get milkshakes at the next drive-thru, and the car is filled with the artificial scent of strawberry. Loki flips through the channels on the radio until he finds something more tolerable, and they sing along loudly, and maybe terribly off-key, and it's picture perfect the way it is.

They are riding the ferry to the island, standing in the stern, drawn farther from the other passengers, and Loki's smile is relaxed on his face as he leans against the railing. Thor feels the tension leave his own muscles, too, a tension he hasn't known of. A seagull is following them, squawking as it slides on a current, and they follow its airborne flight absent-mindedly. They are free here, too, in a similar airborne levitation. Nobody knows them, nobody cares who they are, and what they have. If what they hide in their snow globe is anything illicit.

Thor's chin scrapes against Loki's shoulder as he nestles against his back, one arm draping around Loki's abdomen. He still cannot believe how their bodies fit so seamlessly, and the idea has a sacred savor to it. He doesn't want to say they are meant to be but sometimes it feels so. Inky feathers of Loki's hair flap in the wind, stroking Thor's cheeks like a silky veil, and Thor smuggles a kiss onto the sharp edge of his jaw because he can, and it's a gift.

As it turns out, Loki is a good swimmer, and he can stay under the surface for an unsettlingly long time. The first time he disappears, Thor starts to fret when he doesn't resurface, and he ducks to search for him in frenzy. He calls him salmon, and not only because of it. Loki is a slippery, uncatchable creature.

"If you catch me, you can have me," Loki challenges him, and Thor is surprised that he succeeds in the end. Or maybe, he shouldn't be so surprised at all.

"You didn't try too hard, right?" he teases, and it earns him the honor of being pushed underwater.

It doesn't matter, though, because later that night he has Loki there, on the shore, when the line between sky and sea ceases to exist. There is not an inch space between their bodies, either. Thor kisses the salt from the dip at the base of his neck. Loki's skin is ablaze under his lips where he is sunburnt, and it would surely ache later, more than the marks Thor leaves along them.

. .

His favorites are the lazy weekend mornings when the light through the blinds paints stripes on their blanket and Loki is sleep-scented, dream-soft on top of Thor's back.

"I think I drooled on you in my sleep," Loki mumbles, and the laughter in Thor's chest is a deep, blissful rumble.

"I love when you do it. I wouldn't want you any other way." And he smirks affectionately at the glorious bed head Loki's wax-laden hair can twist into each night. Then it would twist further each morning they have time to roll into each other.

Thor has other favorite things as well, a lot of small details. The odd black hairs on his pillow, the warm dent in the mattress right after he hears the tap open in the bathroom, the two coffee mugs in the sink and the vanilla soymilk in the fridge: these are the things Thor wants to keep forever. Every idea, every promise in each of them.

He wonders if these simple things are the ingredients of happiness.


	3. fall

**A/N:** thank you guys for your comments, they warm my heart3

* * *

**iii. fall**

Thor's muscles are aching from sitting motionless for what has to be a long time, judging by the playlist on his laptop turning on repeat for the second time. Loki uses steel blues and emerald greens with a lot of yellow from what Thor can see. The smell of egg tempera sits heavily in the air. Loki insisted on painting a portrait of Thor, and Thor agreed because it has its own benefits: he can watch Loki work without making him snap at him for doing so.

"Is that a snake where my left eye should be?" he jests when Loki is finally done.

"You have no artistic vein, Thor," Loki snatches back his painting with a smirk, smudging the edges with his fingertips.

Thor pulls him closer by his ankle and blows a kiss on the rough patch of skin on his knee. "I think you're a masterpiece. Isn't that enough artistic taste?"

"Silly," Loki bats him away with a hollow laugh.

Thor doesn't understand why he looks suddenly so frightened.

. .

The window is open, and the breeze brings in the scent of autumn. It's his favorite part of the year, the few days of Indian summer when silver gossamer stretches among the twigs of bushes in the park, and the rays of the sun are like lulling fingers stroking his face when he steps out of the shadows. It's an in-between state, and Loki is drawn to it for he has only ever lived caught between steps and desires and fears, always in transit.

Thor is leaning against the windowsill, the steam from his coffee mug envelops his face, and Loki fancies it seeps into his skin and stays there forever. He is worried he would never be able to drink coffee without thinking of Thor, without remembering how it feels when his nose scrunches up against Thor's cheek and he can catch the whiff of black and smooth and bittersweet. How he can taste it on his tongue, too. How it is like what they have.

The light drops patches of golden gleam on Thor's left cheek as he smiles, strokes of golden and ginger that make him look young and carefree, his hair is a wild untamed cascade of molten jewel, gold and bronze and copper and pristine ivory. Loki is unable to look away. He watches the shadows stuck under Thor's eyebrows and nose, how dark they appear placed next to the blots of light, and wonders whether the contrast is just as striking between the two of them, too.

"Come here," Thor says, and Loki obeys.

Thor's hand curls lightly around his hipbone, and Loki ruminates upon how willingly one can walk into a trap that would never let them go again. He wonders how long a moth can circle around the candlelight before it consumes it.

"Loki," Thor says softly, and Loki knows it's a confession. In the light, Thor's eyelashes are washed white above the watery color of his eyes, and there is a dimple in his smile that makes Loki's stomach convulse, and he doesn't know if the sensation prickling it is excitement or it is dread.

The curl of Thor's other hand around the back of his neck is a familiar shackle, and now he feels this collar suffocate him. He leans closer though, he kisses Thor, and thinks how the silver gossamer can be stretched only to a certain point before it snaps.

. .

When the knock sounds, Thor doesn't give any thought to who might be on the other side of the door. He has a towel wrapped around his waist and another one around his neck as he trudges across the living room, leaving wet footprints across the floor. His limbs are heavy with post-coital satiety, mouth full of Loki's taste he is unwilling to get rid of. There is nothing quite like morning sex, he smirks to himself as he cracks the door open and peers out, using it to keep him decent.

"Hi, Thor."

The petite form of Jane Foster feels like a giant slap, trying to wake him from a dream he clings onto. He opens the door wider without thinking. Suddenly the water drops running from his hair down his back are like several icy beads, stark cold against his heated skin, marring into him something he doesn't want to understand.

"Jane," he tries to smile. There is something unfair in how he has to force it, unfair to her. "Sorry."

He pulls the towel tighter as an afterthought, and wants to kick himself when Jane laughs.

"It's not like this is the first time I see you like this," she remarks but she blushes anyway. He still finds it cute when she does so. "Sif said you have the morning off today."

"Yeah, yeah…" he steals a glance at the bedroom door standing ajar. Just a few minutes ago Loki was still reclining on the bed, flushed and covered in cum, slowly putting himself together after coming undone. It always takes him time, and Thor loves watching him glow in this blissful state he knows he was responsible for tossing Loki into. "Come in. And give me a second."

He doesn't wait for her to step in. In the bedroom, Loki watches him with hooded eyes, lying naked and motionless on the top of the sheets, and there is something frightful in his gaze, but something heavy and accusatory, too.

"It's Jane," Thor whispers while he pulls on a shirt and sweatpants, not bothering to towel off.

"And now you want to ask me to stay in the room?" Loki asks with a smirk but it's so sharp that Thor winces at the sight of it.

"I don't know what she wants." It's not an answer. He can skirt topics, too; it's a means he's never resorted to before. "I try to shake her off quickly," he adds, and it sounds like an apology for a slight he has never made.

Jane is sitting on the couch like she has never belonged there before, and for a long moment Thor cannot believe that she actually has. He cannot understand how he could ever find something so different from what he has now with Loki real.

"I don't want to disturb for too long. I only came for my books, if you still have them," she says, but the way she locks her knees and folds her hands around them tells him otherwise.

They share a few pleasantries, and nothing is like in old times. Thor wonders how two people can drift apart so easily as if they have never shared intimacy. The thought frightens him, it claws at his insides with its dozen talons because could this at a point happen to them, to Loki and him, too? The possibility sickens him like a fall from the edge of a cliff, being boundless but not free, and inevitably broken in the end.

He senses how Jane is trying to get an answer to a question she doesn't ask. It exhausts him to no end, and keeps him on tenterhooks. He eyes the books beside her, and thinks how he should have returned them earlier. There is something menacing in the silences between their questions and answers, menacing in the closed door behind his back, locking up secrets he can never share.

"And are you seeing someone?" Jane asks finally.

The hesitation is loaded, and though Thor has been anticipating the question, the words jumble in his head. It's as if on cue that he hears the bedroom door open.

Loki strides toward the bathroom in Thor's pajama shorts that hang low on his hips, and it's on purpose like everything is with Loki. At least he has wiped off the dried semen from his chest.

"Oh, sorry," Loki says in mock surprise, and everything about it is so obscenely fake that a muscle starts to twitch in Thor's eyelid. "Don't mind me," Loki adds lightly but the glare he directs at them is sharp and cutting.

"He—" Thor trails off because there is no right ending to that line. "We share the apartment," Thor finishes, and he cannot comprehend why Loki has to do this.

"Every part of it," Loki adds with a sneer, and disappears in the bathroom, leaving nothing but wreckage behind.

From then on, it is a blur of words he cannot concentrate on while a part of his mind is wrapped around the fact that the water hasn't started to run in the bathroom.

"I think I should leave," Jane stands, and Thor doesn't have it in him to save face, so he lets her go with relief.

He finds the bathroom door unlocked. Loki is sitting on the closed toilet lid. His eyes are feverish as he looks up at Thor, and never before has he looked so dreaded and defiant at the same time. Thor wants to be angry at him, wants to accuse, to scold, to yell but the severed shards of Loki's haunted gaze pierce him to the core. He kneels before him, his hand winding into inky hair.

"Oh, Loki."

"Maybe I owe you an apology," Loki says, and it sounds like a question. He doesn't say sorry, though, he doesn't have the words for it. Those minutes behind the bedroom door warped something within him into a shapeless, monstrous heap. Through the closed door, all he could hear was the low rumble of Thor's voice. It shook his guts apart.

"You should have a little faith in me," Thor whispers, and Loki hates the sad tone in his eyes. He lets Thor pull him closer, and it is only convenient because Thor cannot see how taut his smile is.

_No, I should have faith in myself_, he thinks as an afterthought.

. .

When he arrives to the café for his afternoon shift, Jane is there with Sif. The look they give him makes his stomach convulse with fear. Jane stays sitting at the counter, sipping wordlessly from her cup while he busies himself with an order but it seems to be a quiet day with not many things to do. Thor can feel her gaze on him, the words she is trying to put together like a calculation for her constellations.

"That was your brother," she says eventually.

"Loki," Thor says, and he doesn't understand why it comes out as a correction.

Jane twirls the mug slowly between her fingers. Americano with cream and caramel syrup, he still remembers her favorite. There shouldn't be too much left of it, he thinks vaguely. He just wants her to leave and never come back, so he can maintain a secret greedily, maintain something that feels more and more unreal.

"Are you an… item, Thor?"

"I've never said that," he snaps. It's not an answer, he knows. That's something he learnt from Loki, but Jane is smart enough to realize it.

"But is it true?" Jane's hands are tiny fists now on the counter, so small that he could envelop them in one hand. On some points in the past, he has.

"He's my brother." And it's not an answer either, and suddenly it feels like he cannot speak in any other way these days.

"Only step-brother."

"Semantics," and he almost barks it. He is saved by a new group of customers, and by the time he brews two cups of latte macchiato and a cappuccino, Jane is already gone.

What he feels, though, is not relief. The fact that he denied their relationship hangs off him like a wet coat, and something tells him it marks the end of their Halcyon days.

. .

It's Sif's birthday that day. They are about to leave for their usual pub where they have been planning to throw a small party for her, Hogun and some other friends lingering in the doorway, and Thor deletes the last few words of the text for the third time. He hates himself for it, for this small yet grave thing coming between him and Loki. Never before has he been forced to choose the right words. The fourth attempt is simple, and he opts for it. _It's Sif's birthday party today. Wanna join?_

The answer comes only when they are already at the pub, and Thor's hands are clammy from trepidation.

The answer is simple, too, and it sends a mixture of self-disgust and relief through him. _I'll pass_. And Thor wonders if it took just as long for Loki to compose his own reply.

. .

He learns that Loki has no real friends during an argument. It marks their first fight that's not over some triviality, and every fact stated sounds like an accusation.

Thor knows Loki sees through him, through the clumsy attempts at meeting his friends without hurting Loki. Without him to know it. He doesn't want to admit but inviting Loki makes him awkward and unreasonably concerned after what happened with Jane, and Thor wonders if his two worlds can ever be reconciled because he is too selfish to give up any of them.

"You can meet your friends without my permission, Thor," Loki snaps.

But it doesn't sound reassuring at all.

"You cannot cage me in." Thor says it already through the locked bathroom door, and doesn't understand how Loki is able to place the blame on him so effortlessly. His forehead touches the door, and he imagines Loki leaning against it on the other side, and Thor wonders when things have come so palpably between them. "If I meet my friends, it doesn't mean I need you less. Love is not something that runs out. I can share it, and still there is just enough left."

Crouched on the bathroom floor, Loki bends his head between his knees. What he interprets is: _You have other people to care for. I have only you. _

How could he ever explain to someone like Thor that he does not know the concept of sharing?

. .

"Some things cannot be blended," Loki says.

There is a dark smudge on the heel of his palm, and another blur under his left eyebrow, making his gaze loaded and beclouded. He rubs the pads of his thumb and forefinger together, smearing the black stain the charcoal left on them. He has been huddled in the corner of the couch all morning, drawing in a sort of trance he descends into lately. Trance that excludes everything, as well as Thor, and he hates when Loki shuts himself away where Thor cannot reach him.

Loki looks at him over his knees pulled up to his chest. "Like light and shadow."

His smile is a twisting thing like the steam curling from his mug as he looks at Thor. His words dissipate in the mint-scent, and Thor thinks his kiss would be bitter and sharp now. He wonders if there is anything Loki wants to tell him with this, with the cloud of fume whirling around his head and entwining with syllables that are maybe intended to convey something beyond their meaning.

It feels like a test he hasn't prepared for properly.

"It's an eternal chase but never a blend," Loki adds.

When Loki stands and rinses his cup, it feels like a test Thor has just failed.

. .

They are watching a rather dull movie when Thor's mobile goes off. Loki is leaning against his shoulder, distant and tense with a hint of uncertainty. It's often like that these days, and Thor doesn't know how to change it. He draws a bit farther when he sees the caller ID, a strange jerk running down his torso, but Thor holds the cell phone to the ear closer to Loki so he can hear what he talks about with his father.

He deems it a good decision just a minute later when Odin tells him Loki skipped this semester. For a second, he forgets to answer. Loki watches him with a closed expression, and Thor suddenly realizes how they have gone back to the very beginning, with Loki hiding from him and Thor chasing him. He wonders what else has been kept a secret between them.

"Did you know?" Odin asks him curtly; his questions have always sounded authoritative and interrogatory.

Thor thinks he should have. Loki is away every day, and it's Thor's problem if he assumed he leaves for school. Now he realizes Loki must have kept the job at the sex shop instead but he never cared to ask. As Loki has never cared to share it with him. It hurts, this simple truth wedged between them but he doesn't let it show, and he doesn't even realize how it is yet another thing they keep from the other.

Thor pinches his nose bridge. He has never been good at lying. "It matters not. If he didn't tell me, he had a reason for it."

He catches Loki's gaze, sees the bright and overwrought edge in his eyes. He looks stranded and derailed as he is watching him intently, studying his expression as if attempting to figure out Thor's next steps. He is like a cornered animal now, and Thor cannot comprehend why he feels so.

"What is he still doing there then?" Odin asks sharply. "He should come home. There is no reason for him to stay in the city now."

Loki moves farther against the armrest of the couch. The cutting smirk on his lips casts an askew reflection in his eyes. There is an unnamed challenge there, stone-hard, cold. This Loki is unfamiliar to him, this wild thing with foam at his mouth and red in his eyes, this desperate, unpredictable creature ready to jump and dive into its own death scares Thor. The ripple of intent to fight under his skin is like crud, oozing black and sticky and wicked.

He stays there until Thor ends his call, and for a second Thor has to think how to deal with this stranger.

"You know you can stay here as long as you want, Loki."

He draws closer and Loki lets him, anticipation flickering in his eyes like he is waiting for a question, for accusations, for grudge. They are there, sitting heavily in Thor's chest but he hesitates to release them. He touches the slender neck, and watches how the tension is still ever present in Loki's shoulders. There is a thought being born in Thor's mind, a fear he has kept pushing back, a simple truth.

"Please don't leave," he says. He thinks nothing matters, the lies, the secrets, the half-truths. He thinks resentment kept hidden, words unsaid, will not fester.

But when Thor kisses him, his tongue rasps against Loki's lips like an admonishment he cannot voice.

. .

"My useless father called the other day," Loki says. He doesn't look at Thor, his gaze is stone-hard stillness as he stares ahead. The streetlights kiss his cheeks with reds and greens and neon yellows. Thor watches him from the corner of his eyes as the smoke unfurls around his head like a gossamer halo. Loki is sitting beside him like an odd object someone has left on the passenger seat, all sharp angles and foreignness under the wrapping. As he draws on his cigarette, his cheeks hollow, and Thor forces his gaze away. He flicks the windshield wiper on, though it isn't raining anymore but there is a fallen leaf stuck to the glass he wants to wipe off with a despair that must belong to something else.

"What did he want?"

Loki snorts. He pulls the window down and blows the smoke against the biting wind, watching as it's being ripped to shreds. The draught seems to tear the words from his lips. "Money. What else?"

Thor regards him as he takes one last drag, thin lips curling around the butt. He would taste tar on them if he kissed Loki but he doesn't dare now.

"What did you say?"

Loki shrugs. He bats his hand to dissipate the smoke and flicks the stub out the window. The ash blinks like tiny imp fires over a moor. "That he could suck it."

Later, when the gaps in his life are like holes on a grater and the days fall through them without trace, Thor thinks this is where everything took a final painful turn.

. .

He can't sleep. The rain is spluttering against the glass and the tin roof of the shop downstairs. It should be comforting but it isn't.

Thor isn't sleeping either; Loki can feel it in the arm looped around him. They don't talk, and the silence feels like they have a hole in the ceiling, and the rain falls through it and now pools around them, cold and uncomfortable, a slowly rising flow. He wants to believe the arm holding him close is something permanent and resolute but all he can think of is how things always end. Maybe it has already started with them lying motionless side by side, pretending sleep, pretending they were not listening to the rain and trying to see if there is a future, a secret message for them hidden in its Morse codes.

. .

Loki doesn't pick it up even the fifth time Thor calls him. In his mind he can hear the long guitar riff Loki uses as his ringtone play endlessly while in his ear the monotone beeps are far too calm for his thundering heart rate. The gaps between the beeps feel like something they have punctured into their life together, broken lines and missing parts.

Later the day he listens to the mechanical voice informing him that the phone is switched off, and he is tempted to go home and check if Loki is there. He left for work in the morning without Loki showing up or trying to contact him, and it sickens him to an extent that is unhealthy and somehow possessive.

"Where were you all night?" It's the first thing he asks in the afternoon as he rushes into the bedroom. "Did it occur to you I could be worried about you?"

Loki sits up on the bed, clothes crumpled and hair tousled. His voice is still muddy with sleep but he scoops to the edge with a smirk.

"Oh, don't be so worked up, I'm all right," he says flippantly as he unbuttons Thor's jeans and rubs him expertly through his briefs. "I swapped my shift at the shop."

"All night?" Thor wants to bat him away but the relief that Loki is safe and sound weakens his resolve.

"Mmh," Loki mouths his cock through the cotton.

"I called you," he doesn't mean to sound accusatory but it comes out terribly loaded.

"It was on mute. Then the battery went off." The glint in Loki's eyes is playful but suddenly Thor cannot decide if it has anything to do with how he blows a breathy kiss against Thor's cock. "Hm, I missed you."

"You were with someone?" Thor asks, and the words cut his tongue and slip back in his throat, strangling him.

Loki's lips twist into a frown. "Someone? No."

It occurs to Thor only when Loki's mouth is already full that maybe he phrased the question in the wrong way but the idea gets lost in a string of curses and moans. He doesn't know where the idea comes from but he believes there is something desperate and vicious in the way Loki's tongue runs up his cock.

. .

It's drizzling when they leave the art gallery, and Thor thinks it couldn't be more fitting. He agreed to accompany Loki even though he has no interest in abstract blots others call art. He planned to spend more time with Loki because he can sense in every minute how they are drifting apart slowly, how something unnamable is wedging between them.

The umbrella opens with a snap in Loki's hand. It's red and has the emblem of one of the local football teams Thor has been supporting since childhood. He still goes twice a month to kick the ball around with his friends but it's mostly more about chatting and drinking beer afterwards.

They just missed the bus. They draw farther from the road lest the bypassing cars cover them in mud as they dash across the puddles.

"Why didn't we come by car?" Loki hisses, and Thor knows he is trying to pick a fight again, over trifle, insignificant things as if barking at each other would rather drive them closer than chase them apart. He planned the evening differently but he has no courage to bring it up now, so he leaves the accusation unanswered.

He lets Loki hunch under the umbrella. Maybe it would be big enough for both of them, but the rigid way Loki clutches the handle to his chest tells too much. There is a feral glint in his eyes, and Thor isn't sure it's only from the red shade of the umbrella.

A leaf is stuck to Loki's left shoe and Thor is watching how it leaves a muddy blot on the fabric. Their reflection on the wet pavement is a smudged, undefined blur, and he wonders when this thing between them became so obscured. When did the silence slip in between them like a thick blanket of fog? There are now silences so loaded that leave them suffocating. How they can hide so many things between touches and endearments, between the main meal and the dessert, between one moan and the other, is beyond Thor.

He remembers the day Loki walked back into his life and he wonders if he would one day walk out of it just so easily on a day similar to that.

. .

The fog is dripping off the streetlamps and ghosting among the buildings. Outside it's milky white and strange, a world Thor hardly recognizes.

"I'm going for a walk," Loki says, taking his coat.

"Please, don't," Thor chokes out. He cannot tell why but the fog scares him. It can swallow Loki and he will never find his way home again. It is a ridiculous concept but he cannot help it.

. .

When Loki kisses him, Thor thinks he would love him forever.

. .

When Loki leaves him one day, Thor fears he would love him forever.


	4. winter

**A/N: **As always, thank you so much for your comments.

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**iv. winter**

Thor cannot really recall how they ended up here but eventually it comes down to this: they are shouting at each other with such fervor neither understands, and Loki is packing in frenzy. There is nothing stoic or collected in the way he does it, and Thor watches in numb shock how he pulls apart their life shirt by shirt, item by item. He doesn't understand how everything can be packed up in a leather bag, everything they shared, everything he holds onto, everything that forms the framework of his days. How this can be just taken away from him.

He shoves a shirt into his bag and Thor doesn't dare to point it out that it's actually his. With feverish, bloodshot eyes, Loki glares at him.

"Do you remember that night when I was away?" Thor replies with apprehensive silence because he recognizes the dagger-sharp words Loki has been piling inside him for so long now. It was only the question of time when he would throw them at him with lethal precision. "I was with someone. I let him fuck me."

He knew it, somewhere deep inside Thor thinks he all along knew it but it doesn't make it any easier. Something crumples, shrinks inside him, leaving a raw bleeding wound behind, like a layer of tissue he scratches off gradually until it cannot heal without a scar.

"Why?!"

"Because I wanted to." And it's like a half-finished sentence, like everything Loki says.

"Why?" Thor repeats because it is all he seems to be able to do.

Loki's laughter snaps like an overstretched rubber band. The flesh of his mouth flashes at Thor as he sneers with rabid venom.

_To see if I have a way out. If there is anyone else—_ Loki wants to choke on the truth whirling on his tongue but it bogs down before it could spill, and gives way to another kind of truth, no less poisonous.

"Thor, open your eyes. We are brothers, for fuck's sake! You said it yourself. What would you tell to Odin? That you fuck your new brother? Then we will be a happy little family? This is no reality, Thor!"

He grabs his bag and moves across the apartment as if there haven't been months between his first route in and his last out.

"I let you go because this is what you need," Loki tells him sharply, with heavy, cold accusation, and for a moment Thor doesn't even realize it's not true. Loki's truths are always wrapped up in lies and warped to an extent that they sound like different truths. "Thanks for the couch. I should have never moved from there."

Thor only stares after him, stares at the closed door, and he cannot understand how two people can fight and wound with so many words unsaid.

. .

By the evening everything is covered with a thick blanket of snow, and as he is watching the trails of footprints crisscrossing it, Thor wonders if any of them is Loki's. Provided he found and followed it, would it lead him to Loki?

The street is quiet and blank and white, and all he can see is that the snow has buried everything he knows underneath.

. .

He cannot reach Loki's phone anymore. He figures it out already the next day, sitting among the crumpled sheets that smell of straining effort at sleep, and sex that's stale and gone – he thinks so is their love. The SIM card is probably in the dumpster in front of the house, but it doesn't stop him from trying to call it from time to time.

A part of him doesn't want to call Loki ever again, the part that wants to go berserk at the thought of Loki running to someone else and letting them touch him the way only Thor touched Loki, the part that is scared that Loki might find someone to replace him, someone who gives him what Thor has been unable to. Because there must be something Loki was lacking, something that drove him into another person's arms. The gnawing certainty that he needs Loki more than how Loki has ever needed him eats him away by the minute.

He learns it from his father that Loki has never showed up at home, and it's good that they are talking over the phone because Thor can pretend that he has to hang up before Odin has the chance to ask him what has transpired between them.

He considers talking to Farbauti, but in the last second he always changes his mind. How could he tell her that he somehow managed to chase her son away?

. .

His clothes are everywhere on the floor, hanging off the shelves as if the closet has coughed up its content. He doesn't touch anything, keeps it in the state Loki left them. He cannot bring himself to tide up because that would mean he attempts to go back to how it had been before, but it's impossible.

For the first time ever since they started their relationship, he realizes how they risked everything on that gone spring night when they first tasted each other. He didn't comprehend back then that whatever the future would bring for them, they could never go back to being brothers, not after this. And now he lost everything in one go, he lost the brother along the lover.

. .

There is something disillusioning in how the body can function when the mind is so addled and faraway. Thor wonders if Loki knows the rusty feeling of disconnection, the lingering glances he casts around aimlessly that leave no imprints in his memory, words he doesn't remember saying and other words people tell him without him registering them. He wonders if the empty space in the bed makes Loki feel drowning, too. If the sheets wound around his limbs are only cold replacements of a warm body pressing against him, and it doesn't let him sleep at night. He doesn't want to think that Loki might share his bed with someone at the moment – he needs that single illusion to keep him together.

Thor realizes the abyss under the floor still holds him captive, the abyss they fell into that long gone spring night, the faded traces of domestication that keep lingering in every object and every wall of the apartment, on the second mug that waits untouched on the plate rack above the sink, on the unused toothbrush in the bathroom, the cinnamon flakes he still keeps buying though he himself has never liked them.

He doesn't understand how he could fall in love without realizing it.

. .

"You should take a day off, or two," Sif says one time after they close up for the night. They are about to head for their cars but Thor halts there, right at the edge of the light of the streetlamp. It has started to snow again, and every car is white lining the street.

"I'm all right," he says, but he thinks, as he looks at Sif and watches the snowflakes dot her dark hair, as he looks at her and sees someone else's dark lashes and curving brows, tiny frozen crystals stealing white glints in green eyes, that nothing is all right anymore.

. .

The nights turn so cold that Thor needs to crank up the heat in the apartment. The insulation of the windows is so poor that each morning he finds a new intricate design of window frost on the glass when he pulls the curtain apart. They remind him of the delicate veins on the inner side of Loki's wrists, pale blue arabesque under the creamy skin, a steady pulsation against his lips as he kissed them, following their route up his arm to Loki's heart.

Each morning he claws his nails into the frost and scrapes them off until they run in cold droplets off his fingertips.

. .

Sif decorated the windows of the café with long garlands of Christmas lights, and they hardly sell anything that has no cinnamon or cloves or cardamom in it. Loki has always scoffed at the whole concept of Christmas but he loves the taste of it, baked apples and mulled wine and roasted chestnut, and it makes Thor's stomach roll every time he has to take an order that includes these.

The blinking lights glide off the countertop in green, red, yellow waves, and he remembers how they coated Loki's cheeks in colorful tones, outlining the curve of his neck and the angle of his jaw as he reclined on the couch at their parents' house just the last year. He remembers how Loki caught him staring, how he stretched under his scrutiny, making the lights shift over the dips and hollows of his body. He remembers Loki sitting up and leaning so close that their legs almost entangled. He stole a sip from his glögg then, and licked his lips, and Thor now knows that he probably was clearly aware of what kind of fantasy he triggered with it in Thor's mind. Loki planned this thing between them, but Thor sometimes wonders if he planned the separation, too. If he ever thought of their relationship as something temporary, nicked and imperfect. Something he would leave behind one day.

. .

He doesn't even deny that the reason he is anxious about visiting his father for the Christmas holidays is the meek hope that Loki would come, too. Somewhere deep inside he knows he is deluding himself. Loki has never been known for giving grand gestures or caring for traditions.

He helps around the kitchen, cuts the Yule ham in neat slices while the rye bread is baking in the oven. He takes the sausage, the herring, the cabbage from the fridge, and he wonders whether Farbauti remembers she has to cook only for three. It's only the two of them. Odin is in his workshop, trying to carve the pine tree into its stand.

There are a couple of postcards Thor hasn't seen before pinned to the fridge door with magnets they have collected over the years from their holidays, most of them from the times his parents were still together. He reads the names of distant locations written on the cards, his thumbs running along their edges.

"Loki sends them," Farbauti says from beside the stove, and something constricts in his heart. He hasn't heard Loki's name for weeks, he hasn't uttered it either, at least not to someone else, only in the solitude of his apartment.

"He is in contact with you?" he blurts, but he doesn't understand why he is surprised to begin with. But maybe, it's not even surprise what he feels, rather a kind of twisted, writhing jealousy.

"He sends the postcards. He even calls sometimes."

Thor reads the names of cities now more carefully, trying to figure out the order of them, drawing a map of Loki's journey. The cobwebs of his route wrap around Thor's heart in a wiry net, it projects a permanent constellation on the wall of his consciousness, brighter than any stars can ever be.

"Where is he headed to?"

"No, Thor. What is he running from?" Farbauti smiles faintly. She puts the lid on the pot, cutting the puffs of steam curling from it. There is a grave, heavy edge in her gaze Thor rarely sees on her. "He has been like this ever since Laufey left us. Now Loki rather leaves before others leave him."

A piercing ache unfurls in Thor's guts, sickening fear that claws at him and rips him to shreds.

"Will he come back?" he forces out.

"Maybe, one day. When he is no longer in search."

Thor doesn't ask what he is in search for. There is no answer for that.

He pulls the postcard from under the small version of the Eiffel-tower. It shakes in his hand. He is tempted to collect all of them and retreat to his old room where nobody can see him, and stay there with these treasures that show nothing but the distance that separates him from Loki. He turns the postcard and reads the few lines with Loki's neat handwriting, the curve of the capital T and the roundness of O, and he imagines how his own name would look in Loki's script. _I'm okay. You would like this place. It's calm here. The weather is bad. I hope you're fine._ From any other people this would be cold and distant but Loki is different. There is not much more he lets on.

Thor sticks the postcard back to its place. He doesn't dare to turn the others because he thinks the absence of his own name from the messages would destroy him just a little more.

"What happened?" Farbauti asks quietly, and Thor tries not to fidget under her scrutiny. He doesn't want to lie, he's never been good at it anyway.

"I don't know," he admits, and it's true. "We had a fight… but it couldn't be it… there was something deeper."

"Don't beat yourself up over it. It's not your fault, not even his."

"I just miss him," he mumbles lamely. Farbauti pats his shoulder with a reassuring smile he cannot find the strength in him to return.

"He was happy there, I know it. But happiness has the risk of dwindling with time. Loki is the type who rather gives it up before it starts to fade."

He glances over at the postcards, and doubts he could ever comprehend Loki. For him, happiness is something he would fight only harder for if it starts to fade.

. .

The landscape beyond the glass is washed white. He doesn't even know where the bus goes but it matters little. It can never arrive for someone who doesn't have a destination.

Loki wipes the condensation off the glass. Slow drops edge their way down and disappear at the seam, drawing parallel stripes like the iron bars of a cage. It's an unsettling idea. He thought he was running free.

He has done it sometimes, in shorter distances, after work at the sex shop. He would sit on a bus, any bus, and imagine that it took him somewhere he wouldn't find his way back from. It scared him sometimes. Other times what scared him was the fact that he didn't go far enough.

He has never told Thor about it. Thor sometimes didn't know how to keep him without binding him, and every touch was a rope he wound around him.

. .

Thor thinks sometimes that they didn't just fall apart: they have never really been together.

For Loki is a wild, free thing.

For Thor might be not unlike him.

For they speak a different language sometimes. He isn't sure if there is a dictionary to any of them at all.

. .

The chai latte is the wrong thing. In every café it is so. Too sweet, too bland, too strong. He tries it in every city, and the routine gives a certain sense of security. He doesn't know what he is hoping for, if he is hoping for anything at all. What would happen if he found the perfect chai latte – the _second_ perfect? Maybe he would settle down, Loki plays with the thought with the freedom of someone who craves for something beyond reach. But the chai latte is always the wrong thing everywhere.

As is the barista the wrong person in each café.

He doesn't know if he wants to prove something with this.

He walks up to the counter and asks the barista to break a bill. The coins he gets are heavy like lead in his hand. There is a payphone on the other side of the street. These days one has to make extra effort to find a payphone, so this is how he ended up in the café in the first place. The chai latte is only his incentive.

He leans against the glass wall of the booth. The traffic beyond the cage is muted to a low buzz. It has started to snow again, and he has the feeling he will be stuck in this city as well with meters of snow on the roads. All he wishes for is a cigarette, and maybe a whole night long sleep.

The phone number is hardcoded into his mind, even though he doesn't have his cell phone anymore. It should be easy: picking up the receiver, inserting the coin into the slot, dialing the number and waiting for the other person to pick up. A sequence of simple tasks but he never gets beyond putting the coin into the slot. The receiver curls coldly against his palm.

His bag is full of postcards. In each city he buys an extra one. He superscribes them, sticks there the stamp, he writes down a message, and he never slips them into the mailbox. He doesn't know what these are, these unsent, unsaid confessions but they make him feel like an idiot. Maybe this is his way of carrying his past with him. Sometimes he thinks they chase him further away, like clanking tin cans tied to the tail of a dog out of cruelty, scaring and driving it off.

Sometimes they seem to be the only things keeping him sane.

The coin falls in the phone with a clink. He waits, as if he could hear the beeps of a line he never dialed connecting, and maybe he does, maybe it's only his heartbeats.

. .

One day he finds half a pair of Loki's gloves. Loki, in his haste, must have packed only the other half. Something about it saddens Thor. It is a pitiful concept. He wants to think they are like this pair of gloves. A perfect whole together, useless apart.

. .

Loki catches the man staring at him from the other end of the counter. It goes on for several minutes, and he considers walking up to him. He has no patience for these useless social civilities. The guy would approach him in a few minutes to buy him a drink, and then they both know how it would end, so why to pretend it can be anything more. The only question is _where_ but maybe the restroom stall will make it. He has done it in worse places. At least this one is tall and handsome, and doesn't look like someone who has already drunk one too many shots.

Afterwards from the hostel lobby, he calls his mother. It's pretty late but the taste of semen is nasty on his tongue and he is tempted to upchuck what he has swallowed down and now whirls in his stomach, and he fancies a familiar voice would pull him back to reality.

"Don't worry, I'm fine, Mum. Just wanted to hear your voice," he soothes his mother after the first urgent questions.

It feels good, even the short silences between them, it's an anchor he hesitates to acknowledge that he needs. His mother never asks when he would come back, and he knows it's not because she doesn't care.

"Thor was here during the holidays," she says, and Loki hears what she doesn't say, too.

He clutches the receiver and the goo in his stomach rolls like molten bitumen. _Thor._ The name unties a knot in him, a knot of lies and self-deceptions he hasn't been aware he was carrying around, and a wave of an unnamable sensation pours over him, so painful that it leaves him breathless. He feels tricked, though he is the trickster in this.

"I have to go," he forces out, though he has nowhere to go and they both know it.

He cannot shake off the intrusive, uncomfortable feeling that the taste in his mouth and the smell on his skin are not the right ones. There is a void stretching his chest, cold and aching, and it feels like free fall, and for the first time ever since he embarked on this journey, he doesn't find comfort in it.

. .

Thor opts for walking home instead of catching a cab. The night is crisp, and the pavement is coated with thin sheen of ice but he doesn't live that far, and he had too much beer in too short time so it might help to clear his head a bit. Sif insisted on a night out with a couple of friends, and they chatted and he laughed with them, and for a few brief minutes he could believe nothing was awry.

The moon is like a poorly painted orange circle above the houses, a hole cut in the canvas of the sky. It reminds Thor of things that have gone missing and can never be replaced.


	5. and spring

**A/N:** So this is the end. Thank you for your comments so far, and special thanks to wbss21 because your comments light my week. Bless you for them3

* * *

**v. …and spring**

One night Thor dreams of being a young boy again, and there is a storm outside. In his dream, he finds that old high hat trapped in the bush behind their house.

When he wakes he recalls the old saying: no man ever steps in the same river twice. He wonders whether it is the same with the Northern winds or they could bring the same thing twice. Whether he is still the same as he was before or he could now use the chance more wisely.

If there really is such thing as second chance.

If he should take it, to begin with.

. .

The strange city is buzzing with life around him, and it feels like he is sticking out of it like a lone birch in the middle of a meadow. It's something he's gotten used to over the years, something he has learnt to know all too well. The nagging feeling that has been pushing him to move on for months now screams in his muscles, a never sleeping, never sated screech, and this is the first time Loki stops to actually listen to it. To question it.

_But where to?_

He has seen far too many cobblestones and Greek bearded deities pouring water into fountains, ridged mountains and plain lowlands, and endless miles of rail tracks. They don't form anything in his head apart from a hand drawn map of someone who has always been lost.

_What do you seek?_

And it's a cruel question for it feels like he is seeking something he once has given up willingly.

. .

Thor knows his friends think he has made some progress over the past few months. They resumed the biweekly football sessions, the night outs on Saturdays, drawing up adventurous plans for climbing to the closest summit. His life got back into the old groove.

Only his heart forgot to.

. .

There are two little boys playing across from him while Loki chews through his meal. They look to be brothers, not so far in age from each other. There is an effortless, lazy familiarity in every movement they make, coordinated and intimate in a childish way. With a wicked, sick turn of his mind Loki thinks of all those times Thor has tried to tell him something through his own touches, maybe to show him the difference between having sex and making love. Loki has always regarded those attempts as failure but maybe he was simply too scared to follow the thread such understanding would lead to.

He doesn't know if he would comprehend it now. He isn't sure Thor would still be willing to try to show him.

. .

Thor considers renovating the apartment. It's spring after all, the best time for a change, for renewal. There is an underlying notion that he wants it with the unsaid hope that it would renew him, too, it would change his life where he has failed to change it.

He thinks of repainting the walls. Loki has always hated the white wallpaper that has turned slightly grey over the time. Thor doesn't like to think this is what motivates him now, and for a stubborn moment he almost rejects the whole idea and leaves everything as it is.

It's no easy feat, and he isn't even sure he is cut out for such things. His tastes have always been in the need of improvement. In the store, there are millions of colors of paint with ridiculous names like Tarragon Glory and Natural Saffron and Fragrant Cloud, and frankly, they are just greens and violets to him. He opts for Spring Breeze because it fits the occasion, and also because he believes Loki would like this particular shade of yellow.

It's disheartening in a way how he considers Loki still part of his life, crosschecking every decision to a standard he thinks Loki would follow. But there is no denying the fact that Loki _is_ part of his life – it's only that Loki himself isn't aware of it.

He buys new bed linen too, but he finds himself unable to change the old ones. He hasn't even washed the pillowcase Loki used, fancying he can still catch the scent of him if he concentrates enough but maybe what he feels is the ever lingering smell of lost things. Those sheets have seen too many things and he clings onto them desperately.

He sits heavily on the edge of the bed, with the new, still wrapped covers in his hands, with the can of Spring Breeze at his feet, and he realizes he cannot even deceive himself that all of this isn't just a mirage.

. .

It's drizzling, and he doesn't have an umbrella. The raindrops are balancing on the tip of his nose before trickling off it. It's not the best way to make an entrance but it matters little now.

The air is heavy with the humid scent of rain, thick and heady under the blanket of clouds. The street is coated in grey but the lights reflected in the wet surface of the pavement and in the puddles swell Loki's heart with homesickness. He plays with the thought of sitting down one day and painting this scene. He hasn't had a brush in his hand for months, and he misses the sensation of freedom it gives him.

The building is silent, he doesn't meet anyone as he climbs the stairs.

He remembers every crack and scratch on the surface of the door, and he finds it beautiful. The wood brushes his knuckles with a welcoming familiarity. Everything is quiet, and he doesn't want to think what would happen if someone else answered his knocking. Or if nobody answered it at all.

He starts to count his heartbeats, _one, two, three_, but the numbers jumble in his head. _Nine._ It's not like his life depends on this, but it feels like. _Eleven._

He is at eighteen (though he is sure he has skipped a few numbers) when Thor opens the door. His hair is a golden wash in the light filtering from the kitchen, and Loki's hand twitches, his skin remembering the softness of the locks, silken snakes twined around his fingers. He is itching to touch but he knows he has probably lost the right to it.

"I've written a few postcards for you," he holds the stack of wet and crumpled cards, and they feel heavy with the distance he has put between the two of them. His smile is crooked on his face. "Thought I should finally deliver them."

Thor stays silent. Something in his gaze shifts like he is weighing whether he should make the same mistake of letting him in again. It hurts.

_Say something_, Loki urges him desperately. He doesn't want to leave without hearing Thor's voice just once, however sentimental it sounds even in his own head.

Maybe he should have provoked some thug into beating him up again but he never resorts to the same trick. It's cheap. And this time he didn't want to goad Thor into anything. He likes to think he is fair that much.

"Come in," Thor says finally, opening the door just a little more. His voice is half-caught in his throat, a low rumble of jagged syllables, and a shiver runs down Loki's spine.

He steps in. The apartment smells of Thor and something else his mind labels as _home_. Suddenly he can't remember why he left in the first place but he is certain he would do it again at some point – it is bound to happen, as it has always been like that.

Thor closes the door behind him wordlessly, and takes the stack of postcards from him, sparing only a short glance at them before setting them down on the coffee table. Loki hates this distance between them, the cautiousness, but he knows it's partly his fault that it's there.

He feels heavy with too many layers of sweat of strangers coating his skin, with too many miles of road that led not to somewhere but away from it.

The first time Thor moaned his name in his completion melt some intricate wires in Loki's mind, and ever since then something hasn't been working properly anymore. He has tried to mend it, tried to replace it, to ignore it, he has tried to live without it but he cannot forget the fact that it has worked one way: with Thor. The sentiment would be too over the top for him if he said there was no other way it could ever work, but so far it looked so.

It's not like he hasn't been able to find a good fuck. He's tried and succeeded, and still, each time he has come out wanting. There is only a spark that pushes _great_ towards _magnificent_, but he hasn't been able to find that spark anywhere else. It casts a different glow on everything else, that spark does, and he likes to think they have built more than just a loose series of magnificent fucks with Thor, though what exactly, he is unsure about.

Thor disappears in the bathroom. Loki watches his back as he retreats, the muscles he knows so well are so tense that he can see it even through the shirt Thor wears. He feels a pang of regret that it's there, that Thor moves around like he is preparing for a fight.

When he returns, he holds a towel in his hand. "Dry your hair before you catch a cold."

There is only a hint of invitation in his gesture. Loki hesitates. The idea of putting down his leather bag awakens a feeling in him he cannot shake off: that he would be intruding on something with this simple act, that he would be claiming a spot that hasn't been offered to him yet.

As though reading his thoughts, Thor steps to him with measured movements. His large hands spread the towel over Loki's head, rubbing his hair gently, and suddenly they are taken back to a moment from almost a year ago, when all of this started with dripping skins and glaring wounds and weeks of unbearable tension culminating in that event. With their mouths claiming each other.

They still have them all, the wounds, the tension. Loki wonders if they could have the same continuation. If they would have the same ending. They have tried to build something upon lies and it didn't work out. He doesn't know why it would succeed for a second time but he wants to give it a try.

Thor's fingers skim down the shell of his ear, and Loki knows what runs through his mind. He has removed most of his earrings, but he couldn't part with one particular piece: the small metal Mjölnir. It is a sentiment he has allowed himself to stick to. Thor is looking at him with a loaded gaze that would have driven him to run away just a few months ago, but all it does now is fill him with clawing, desperate want. At times like this he doesn't understand how he could ever think it would drain from Thor's eyes, this feeling, this affection. Why he forced himself to believe it so desperately.

"Your hair is longer," Thor murmurs.

"So is yours," Loki smiles, and before he can stop his fingers they wrap around the end of a lock.

Thor hears his blood drum in his ears. He wants to say so many things. _I missed you. You broke my heart. I tried to learn to move on, and I could but I don't like it._ But they sound ridiculous, and Loki maybe knows them already.

_You will destroy me_, he thinks. But what he says is this: "I still have the couch if you need it."

The question scrapes against Loki's heart for a reason he cannot fathom. He wonders if they will go down the same route again, with him starting on the couch and ending up somewhere on a bus towards a city he doesn't care to check on the map.

He ponders if he can be greedy and selfish, and do it to Thor all over again.

Let Thor do it to him all over again.

He drops the bag to the floor. The smirk he tries should be cheeky and light but it's wavering around the corners. "What if I want the bed instead?"

Thor holds his breath for a minute. He thinks of the wrapped bed linen in his closet, of the can of painting in the corner. He thinks of new beginnings. Maybe they have done it the wrong way. Maybe they can learn from their mistakes and use the second chance given to build something that stands against the storm. Maybe what they need now is a little honesty. Over the last few months all he has been doing was list the things he should have done differently, and all along he thought it was a futile self-torment. He doesn't know what made Loki to come back but it doesn't really matter at the moment. What he is grateful for is that he did.

"I will always be here, Loki. I will not leave," he says, because suddenly it feels important that Loki understood.

"I know," Loki says but it sounds like an afterthought. Thor reaches out and curls around him like a home-scented blanket, and Loki buries his face in the crook of his neck.

There is a yearnful, desperate wish that tries to silence the forever screeching voice in his head as he wraps his arms around Thor's torso. _Hold me close so I would never want to leave again._

But the truth is something else, and he cannot hold it any longer. "And I will always return."

Thor's hold tightens around him for a second before it relaxes. It's clear this is not exactly what he hoped to hear but as his lips glide down Loki's neck, tender and promising and hungry, they know it will do for now.

_fin_

* * *

**A/N:** I hope you enjoyed this little trip with my dear hipsters. I already miss writing this story so much, omg:(


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